Carolyn Benford Henderson

Carolyn Benford Henderson passed away peacefully in her sleep on April 28, 2021, two days after her 101st birthday. What a full and wonderful life she lived in those 101 years! From flying in a barnstormer’s small plane in 1927 to flying on the Concorde in 1995, from sailing across the Atlantic on the SS United States in 1958 to taking a rowboat across rice paddies in Vietnam in 1996, she was adventurous, curious, and eager to learn about and experience different places, cultures, and people throughout the world.

Born in Montgomery, Alabama on April 26, 1920, Carolyn lived through the Great Depression as a young girl. She moved frequently with her parents and her sister, Mary, to Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and finally to Texas in 1939. It was there that she met and married her husband, Charles, in 1941 and made her home in Beaumont for the next 71 years. As a young woman she stayed busy raising her three children, doing volunteer work through the Junior League, and serving as one of the founding members of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church where she was actively involved. Always athletic and a sports lover, she took up golf when her children were in school and became an excellent golfer and frequent club champion at the Beaumont Country Club.

Carolyn was a voracious reader throughout her life and especially enjoyed books of history and biographies. That love of reading served her well when she went back to school in her forties to finish her college education and earned her Bachelor of Arts with honors in History from Lamar University in 1968. She considered this to be one of her most significant accomplishments.

Carolyn traveled often from the time she was a child because her father thought it was an invaluable experience for his daughters. She became an ardent globetrotter in 1968, traveling all over the world, first with her husband and later with her sister and friends. From 1968 to 2002 she went on at least one trip every year except for 1978 and she traveled to every continent except Antarctica. There were many times she generously took her children and grandchildren on trips with her. Wherever she lived she hung up her framed map of the world with pins marking every place she had been, and she was happy to tell anyone who would listen all about her adventures.

In the last decade of her life she moved to Katy, Texas to be closer to her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her husband of 38 years, Charles A. Henderson, and her daughter, Anna Mary Robertson. She is survived by her son Charles A. Henderson and wife Laura of Bradenton, FL, daughter Carolyn McCrory and husband Bob of Fayetteville, TX, grandchildren Michael Henderson, Jeffrey McCrory, Erin McCrory Williams and husband Rickey, four great grandchildren, Penelope, Maxwell, Luke, and Vivienne Williams, and her nieces, Lisa Biser, Cathy Sutton, Mary Mayberry, and Celia Crittenden, who was always like a daughter to her.

Carolyn is remembered with love and admiration by her family and all who knew her. She had an insatiable desire to learn and experience new things, an open-minded and accepting attitude, a strong faith, a generous spirit, and a joyful enthusiasm about living life to the fullest with a cheerful and grateful heart.

There will be a private family burial on Saturday, April 23rd at Forest Lawn Memorial Park prior to the service which will be at 2:00 pm at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, 4090 Delaware St. in Beaumont.